The last time I enquired about scanning books they had a special method to avoid damaging the book. They would only scan up to 10% for copyright reasons, so I'm not sure if they would do the whole lot. I got some Oric books from the Scottish library in Edinburgh. Not sure if their policy has changed or if they are any cheaper, but they had the book IIRC. http://main-cat.nls.uk/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=1461221

The non-lending libraries are supposed to receive a copy of each published work, but I remember them only having some of the Oric titles. They were missing some like the actual Oric-1 and Atmos manuals, if memory serves me!

I was thinking of scanning Jon Bristow's copy which has a lot of coffee stains and is well thumbed. It's got a certain quality like an old vinyl record that crackles. Realistically I doubt I'll ever have time.

Most of the book is a disassembly which is available elsewhere. So if you put that to one side the remaining pages might be a bit more manageable.

I do have a remaining copy that someone might prise from my grasp with a suitable mountain of cash. ;o)

I was myself surprised the Library would allow sending full prints but I thought maybe because the book is old it is permitted... But you're probably right, there must be a limit to how much of the book you're allowed to copy...

Anyway, good news for everyone.... I actually found a SIZEABLE PART of the book in PDF, and guess where?? On Scott Davies' (author or "Oric Explorer ...) site!!! That was pure luck, I just did a Google search and it gave me this result:http://oric.mrandmrsdavies.com/downloads.html

Just click on the "Oric V1.1 ROM.pdf" link and you will get a 133-page excerpt from the book, featuring the whole ROM disassembly and part of the appendices (appendices A to E, so I believe it's missing appendices F to H at least, plus all the technical chapters before the ROM disassembly).

By the way, you're right, the disassembly itself is not that useful especially compared to the one in the French "L'Oric A Nu" book by Fabrice Broche, as the latter has a lot more comments and technical sections in between groups of routines, and also has the advantage of listing both the Oric 1 and Atmos routines side by side... Whereas the Oric Advanced User Guide only features the Atmos 1.1 ROM. Of course, if you don't read French, then "L'Oric A Nu" might not prove as useful...

Anyway, with half of the "Oric Advanced User Guide"' book being already scanned and available in PDF, maybe you would be able to scan part of the rest at least Steve, and maybe other owners of the book could help as well so we can get the full book in PDF??

EDIT: reading your review of this book on your site Steve, it seems there's a whole chapter that may not really be relevant for scanning, namely the chapter on the disk system as it apparently "offers nothing that didn’t come in the Microdisc manual".

That's pretty cool - I like the colours. He doesn't seem to credit Lecester Wheywell, but I may have missed something.

It makes the scanning of the rest a lot more feasible.

Not sure if what I wrote 20 or so years ago still holds. Back then most people using the Oric had a disk system up and running and were probably on Sedoric, which had been updated to work with 3.5" floppies. The old Microdisc info was a bit out of date but nowadays it may be useful , or at least interesting to people.

But I do know how to make a proper tool to do that, but miss a proper hackspace nearby :/

All is needed is some acrylic sheets, laser cutter, some hot air, a good DSLR and the proper software (and things to attach the DSLR)

The actylic sheets are to make aproperly shaped tool to hold the boot and keep it open at the correct page. You take picture of both pages with the DSLR, and the software just put that back straight and flat from the picture the DSLR took

This is basically the method that has been used to digitalise some old book that you have to be precautious with and can't be scan with proper methods.